


cohabitation

by Baekbitficfest, zannen



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:53:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baekbitficfest/pseuds/Baekbitficfest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zannen/pseuds/zannen
Summary: If Baekhyun has to have a roommate, he supposes he could do worse than Do Kyungsoo, the cutest man alive.





	cohabitation

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt #3
> 
> Thank you to everyone who didn't let me abandon this fic, and to the prompter for giving me something so lovely to work with. Writing this felt like an impossible feat sometimes, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Lastly, I'd like to dedicate this fic to the concept of Kyungsoo having a cat.

Baekhyun, whose landlord hates him and is increasing the rent for probably no reason, is a tiny bit fucked.

He could move somewhere cheaper, somewhere more suitable for his price range and the amount of space he realistically needs. A little one-bedroom, or even an officetel. But nowhere else in the city is going to be as convenient as his two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of campus (and his favorite hole-in-the-wall noodle place, which is probably just as important, if not more so). Plus, he has a bathtub. He can’t give up an apartment in Seoul with a _bathtub_.

Failing that, he could also just cut back on expenses. No more paid subscriptions for things he hardly uses, no monthly shopping sprees, no ordering takeout two nights a week… but god, that would be such a joyless existence. He already sacrifices too much comfort and pleasure for university. Any more and he’ll become a shriveled husk of sadness in the world of capitalism. Like Junmyeon.

So all that’s left, in the end, is one last terrible option that Baekhyun hadn’t wanted to consider until now.

He has to get a roommate.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” says Junmyeon. He’s sitting on the floor, claiming not to trust Baekhyun to have clean sheets. Which is fair, because he definitely doesn’t, but it makes Junmyeon a complete hypocrite to even care about that when his own apartment is like a war zone.

“They could be a serial killer and I could die,” says Baekhyun.

“Well.” Junmyeon shrugs. “At least you wouldn’t have to pay rent?”

Baekhyun groans, flopping back on his mattress and flinging an arm over his eyes dramatically. The spine of one of his textbooks is digging into his back, but he’s too distraught to do anything about it.

The point of inviting Junmyeon over was that he was supposed to help Baekhyun with budgeting so he wouldn’t _need_ to think about getting a roommate. But after an hour of desperate number-crunching, it’s become all too clear that that’s the only thing he can do without making outrageous and unacceptable changes to his lifestyle. He hates this. He hates his landlord, and his former roommate, and Junmyeon, and maybe a little bit himself.

“Lu Han probably knows someone,” says Junmyeon. “Or Zitao.”

“Zitao is too trusting,” says Baekhyun. “His friends are probably all murderers.”

“ _You’re_ his friend.”

Baekhyun snorts. “Yeah, and I wouldn’t trust me if I met me.”

He lifts his hips from the bed, textbook now stabbing him right in the shoulder blade, then reaches down and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. He shoots off a quick text to Lu Han, saying, _Need a roommate. Know anyone who’s looking?_ Then he drops his phone onto his ribs with a sigh.

“This is all Chanyeol’s fault,” he says, frowning up at the ceiling.

“For getting a job offer and moving out?” says Junmyeon.

“And for being a shitty roommate and traumatizing me forever.” Thinking back on all of it still makes Baekhyun shudder. The late-night composing and recording sessions. The clumsy accidents. The obnoxiously loud breathing from all his allergies. The inhuman aura of smelliness that lingered around him whenever he worked out, which was too often anyway. And he had this booming voice that carried way too easily, so every time he spoke it filled the entire room and kept Baekhyun from being able to hear himself think. It’s not even that Baekhyun can claim to be a quiet person himself—that would be a complete lie—but at least his regular volume doesn’t sound like a person shouting into a large canyon.

“But yeah, what kind of asshole goes straight to work after getting their bachelor’s instead of just staying in academic hell like the rest of us?” Baekhyun sniffs haughtily. “Unforgivable.”

“You see him practically every week,” Junmyeon says dryly. “You’ve obviously forgiven him at least a little.”

“That’s not—” He cuts off with a yelp as his phone vibrates almost violently on his chest. He grabs it with rushed, clumsy hands and checks the screen. Three new messages from Lu Han.

_Yeah actually_

_His name’s Kyungsoo_

_Hold on I’ll give him your number_

“That was easy,” Baekhyun mutters, texting back a few thumbs-up emojis before tossing his phone onto the mattress. He turns his head to look down at Junmyeon. “What are the chances this guy’s gonna be another Chanyeol?”

“Not very high, knowing Lu Han,” says Junmyeon. “But even if he is, you’ll live, Baekhyun.”

“If he’s annoying, I hope he _is_ a murderer.” Baekhyun rolls onto his stomach and says into his sheets, “Then he can put me out of my misery.”

Junmyeon just sighs.

 

—

 

Kyungsoo, as far as Baekhyun can determine, is probably not a cold-blooded killer. He’s small and polite and wears khakis with rolled-up cuffs—which, yes, is a crime on its own, but not an unforgivable one—and he’s nothing like Chanyeol at all. No loud voice or long, clumsy limbs, no desire to record music at three in the morning, no intolerance for spicy food or animal fur or the use of deodorant. Just a quiet guy with big eyes and tiny shoulders, who looks for all the world like a baby owl, especially with his thick-rimmed glasses. Baekhyun feels strangely protective of him.

“You should find out if animals are allowed before you just let me move in,” says Kyungsoo. “I don’t want you getting in trouble with the landlord.”

“Nah, it’s probably fine,” says Baekhyun. “I mean, if we have to, we can just sneak your cat in and never tell anyone about it.”

The look on Kyungsoo’s face is skeptical, but he smiles a little, which is something. He doesn’t tell Baekhyun that’s fucking stupid, like his friends usually do when he says things—take, for example, when he told Jongdae he was just going to find a sugar daddy to help indulge his frivolous spending in exchange for sucking some dick, and Jongdae told him that was literally the dumbest idea he’d ever heard—so that’s a plus. They’ll probably get along fine, the two of them. Baekhyun hopes so, at least.

“Oh,” Baekhyun says, remembering something kind of important, “but fair warning, um—I’m bi, so I might, y’know, have guys over at some point or something, so if that bothers you or—“

“I don’t mind,” Kyungsoo cuts in. “As long as you let me know ahead of time when someone’s coming, it’s none of my business who you have over.”

Baekhyun nods, sagging with relief. Potential deal-breaker averted, he thinks. “Okay, cool. Nice. So—that’s it, I guess. Unless there’s something else you think we should go over first.”

There isn’t. After Kyungsoo leaves, Baekhyun celebrates finding his soon-to-be roommate by drinking slightly too much soju and sending a string of hearts to Lu Han, who responds with a series of peaches and eggplants that confuses the hell out of Baekhyun but makes him laugh regardless.

The next day, he calls the landlord and asks him if, hypothetically, they’re allowed to have pets, because he’s hypothetically thinking of adopting a cat or something. The landlord makes an irritated sound and says that they _can_ have small pets, hypothetically, if they can still pay the hypothetical rent, and if Baekhyun gets the hypothetical roommate that he hypothetically promised would take the spare room that’s been empty for more than half a hypothetical year.

“Yep, he’s moving in this week,” Baekhyun says cheerily. “Okay, thank you ahjussi, bye!”

“Wh—”

Baekhyun hangs up, then goes straight back to bed to sleep off his hangover.

 

—

 

“You don’t think he’s cute, right?” Jongdae asks. “I mean, you always think your roommates are cute. Remember when—”

“No. Shut up.” Baekhyun bumps Jongdae with his hip, making him stumble and yelp as they walk down the sidewalk. “Look, yeah, I thought Chanyeol was kind of pretty when I met him. But then I spent like a week living with him and it sucked and I didn’t end up falling in love with him because he’s a walking disaster, okay?”

“I was actually gonna bring up Yixing from freshman year,” says Jongdae, “but man, yeah, the Chanyeol thing’s still hilarious.”

Baekhyun cringes. With Yixing it had been a complete misunderstanding, because Yixing was straight as a rod and hadn’t been trying to hit on Baekhyun at all. He just wasn’t completely fluent in Korean, as it turned out, and perfectly innocent things came out as innuendo sometimes. So. Drunkenly kissing him one night had been a terrible mistake, and the memory haunts Baekhyun to this day. (The bright side, at least, is that before Yixing fully realized what was happening, he’d been kissing back a little, and it was pretty nice. He seemed like a good kisser.)

Baekhyun stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Anyway, Kyungsoo isn’t cute. I mean, he is, I guess, but not like that. He’s tiny. A little baby bird. With dumb glasses and bad clothes.”

“Really?” Jongdae says with a note of surprise. When Baekhyun glances at him, he sees raised eyebrows. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I dunno, Lu Han-hyung seemed to think he was pretty good-looking,” says Jongdae. “Maybe the guy just has bad taste.”

“Probably. He’s weird like that.” Baekhyun half-shrugs, then adds, “Anyway, I’m done with straight guys, y’know? So fuck it.”

Jongdae gets this look like he’s about to say something, but seems to think better of it, humming noncommittally instead.

 

—

 

“What’s her name?” Baekhyun asks, kneeling and reaching out to let the cat sniff his hand. She headbutts his knuckles. He coos.

“Baechu,” says Kyungsoo. “And before you say anything, you don’t need to tell me it’s a silly name. I already know.”

Baekhyun laughs, scratching the Russian blue’s ears. “No, I think it’s the perfect name for her,” he says. “It’s cute. Little cabbage girl.” Baechu lets out a rumbling purr.

“She likes you,” says Kyungsoo.

He sits down cross-legged on the floor, and Baechu immediately abandons Baekhyun to climb into her owner’s lap. His eyes and cheeks scrunch a ridiculous amount when he laughs. Baekhyun just wants to put him in his pocket.

“Or maybe not,” Kyungsoo adds, scratching under Baechu’s chin.

“Well, yeah, I can’t compete with her dad,” says Baekhyun. “That’s not even fair.”

Kyungsoo hums. He keeps scratching Baechu as he peers around at the slightly chaotic living room, filled with boxes that Baekhyun insisted could just go anywhere until the unpacking officially starts. With his free hand he pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. The gesture is inexplicably charming to Baekhyun, who already thinks that everything his new roommate does is a little bit precious.

“I should move some things to my room, at least,” says Kyungsoo. “Just to make it easier to unpack everything.” He glances down at the cat in his lap, who’s curled up and made herself comfortable. “Maybe later, though. Right now I’m a bed.”

Baekhyun squints and says, without thinking, “Are you just programmed to be really cute all the time?” Then, quickly, “I don’t mean that in a weird way. Or—I mean, I’m not trying to—”

“Don’t worry, I know what you mean.” One corner of Kyungsoo’s mouth curls into a little smile. His glasses have slid down his nose a bit from looking down. He pushes them back up again. “People don’t usually call me cute, though. So thanks.”

That’s probably the most tragic thing Baekhyun’s ever heard. People not finding Kyungsoo cute? He’s personally offended by the idea. Tiny Kyungsoo, who dresses like the nineties never ended and has the most adorable smile on the planet, and who named his cat after a vegetable? If he isn’t the epitome of cuteness, there’s no hope for the rest of them. Baekhyun’s been accused many a time of being adorable, and suddenly he feels like his entire life has been a lie.

“Anyway,” says Baekhyun, “I can babysit while you move boxes and stuff. She won’t like it as much, but at least she won’t feel abandoned.”

Kyungsoo laughs and lifts Baechu into his arms before getting to his feet. “Sure. You should move to the couch or something first, though. You might be there a while.”

For the next half-hour, Baekhyun sits on the couch with a lapful of cat while Kyungsoo moves boxes into different rooms and starts unpacking things in the kitchen. The prospect of living with someone who actually cooks is exciting. Kyungsoo had seemed surprised over Baekhyun’s lack of kitchenware at first, then happy about all the space that gave him the freedom to put his own things wherever. Baekhyun keeps catching glimpses of all kinds of baking dishes and strange utensils he doesn’t really understand the point of.

“Hey,” says Baekhyun, “so I thought we could order in tonight or something, if you want. Just to make things easier.”

Kyungsoo pauses, stack of dishes in hand, to look over his shoulder at Baekhyun. “Yeah, that sounds good.” He turns back to continue stacking things and asks, “Anywhere specific in mind?”

“There’s a really good noodle place down the street.”

“Yeah? Which one? I might know it.”

It turns out Kyungsoo’s eaten there a ton of times and loves it almost as much as Baekhyun does. That, more than anything, gives Baekhyun high hopes for this whole roommate thing. Enjoying noodles together is the only thing necessary for any relationship. There’s no way anything can go wrong now.

 

—

 

Except it does, and after less than a month, Baekhyun wants to die.

The thing is, Baekhyun has never considered himself a messy person. Especially compared to some of the guys he’s lived with. But by Kyungsoo’s standards, he’s a complete fucking slob. If Baekhyun stops to do anything else before cleaning the dishes he ate off of, Kyungsoo will sigh and get all passive-aggressive and disappointed but insist everything’s fine when Baekhyun asks what’s wrong. Then Kyungsoo just washes everything himself and acts like it’s Baekhyun’s fault for not doing it sooner, which is _ridiculous_ , because Baekhyun didn’t even ask him to do any of that and would’ve gotten around to it himself, and Baekhyun is left feeling guilty over something he didn’t even do. Granted, okay, Baekhyun _does_ sometimes let them just sit for a couple hours and forget about them, but he still would’ve done it eventually.

Then there’s the fact that their schedules overlap very slightly, and Kyungsoo is always in the bathroom when Baekhyun needs to be and vice-versa. Always. If Baekhyun needs to shave, Kyungsoo’s in the shower; if Kyungsoo needs to take a piss, Baekhyun is enjoying his evening bath. And if, god forbid, Baekhyun uses the bathroom before Kyungsoo in the morning, Kyungsoo gets this look on his face like he’s about to march to his death because of Baekhyun’s morning shit. (Baekhyun is starting to suspect Kyungsoo never shits. There’s no evidence of it, at all, ever. It’s really weird.)

They’ve also had minor issues involving Baekhyun’s tendency to forget there’s another person living with him and just walk around in various states of undress, which is maybe slightly—okay, _completely_ his own fault, but Kyungsoo could at least pretend not to be horrified, couldn’t he? From the look on his face, you would think Baekhyun’s junk had traumatized him in some way. It’s offensive, frankly. Baekhyun’s dick has done absolutely nothing wrong.

And then, of course, there’s Baechu.

Fucking _Baechu_.

“I thought you loved that cat.” Jongdae finishes highlighting a line in his notes and looks up. “What happened?”

“She’s great in the _daytime_ ,” says Baekhyun. He slumps down in his chair, rests his chin on his folded arms. They’re in the library, pretending to study—or, in Jongdae’s case, _actually_ studying, for some reason. “But every fucking night, she just yowls and scratches at my door. At, like, three or four in the morning, for maybe thirty minutes. She sounds fucking possessed. I almost had a heart attack the first time.”

“Why don’t you just let her in?” asks Jongdae.

Baekhyun huffs. “I tried that, but then later she just whines when she wants back out.”

“Leave the door open?”

“I can’t.”

Jongdae just stares expectantly. Baekhyun tries to sink down further into the table.

“I can’t sleep with the door open,” he mumbles.

“Why?”

Hiding behind his arms, Baekhyun says, “‘Cause I’m afraid to.”

“You’re afraid to sleep with your door open at night,” says Jongdae. A pause. “How old are you, again?”

“It makes me feel unsafe!” Baekhyun whines. “Someone could just sneak in while I’m alone and defenseless and stab me to death!”

“They could still do that even with your door closed,” says Jongdae. “Like, people can open doors, Baekhyun. You know that, right?”

“Okay, look, that’s not the point.” Baekhyun emerges from behind his sleeved barrier to give Jongdae a look that’s half irritable glare and half childish pout. “It’s the principle of the matter, you know? His cat keeps harassing me. I shouldn’t _have_ to wake up in the middle of the night to some ball of fuzz terrorizing my bedroom door. But he says—and this is the most annoying part, honestly—he says she just likes me and wants to be close to me.” He makes an incredulous noise. “She can be close to me when I’m awake! _What the fuck is her deal?_ ”

“Okay, first of all,” Jongdae says slowly, “she’s a _cat_ , dude. You can’t really reason with her. Or, well, you can try, but it’s probably not gonna get you anywhere.”

“I can’t even reason with her owner, though, and he’s allegedly human!” Baekhyun sighs. “This is hopeless. I wish he’d been a murderer after all. Then there wouldn’t be any problems.”

Jongdae pats him on the arm. “There, there,” he says mildly. “But hey, it could be worse. At least you’re not in love with him.”

That’s true. At least Baekhyun isn’t miserable _and_ hopelessly infatuated with his roommate. That would just be a recipe for disaster.

 

—

 

Lu Han is equally as unsympathetic to Baekhyun’s problems, if not more so, and mostly just laughs at him after he recounts all of this.

“You’re an asshole with an asshole cat,” Baekhyun says as said cat tries to climb all over him, hooking its claws in and ruining his sweater in the process. It’s from the same litter as Baechu; Kyungsoo and Lu Han got them from a friend, apparently. “An asshole cat that doesn’t even have a name because his owner is an eccentric shit.”

“He does have a name,” says Lu Han.

“‘Cat’ doesn’t count.”

Lu Han just smiles. He reaches over and scoops the cat up, then drapes it over one of his shoulders, where it seems content to stay. Its loud purrs are immediately audible.

“You’re really overreacting about all of this, dude,” says Lu Han. “You guys just need to get used to each other. I think most roommates have kind of a rocky start, you know? You’ll reconcile your differences eventually.”

“We’re fundamentally different people, hyung.” Baekhyun picks at a spot on his sweater that’s been stretched slightly by the overeager cat. “There’s nothing to reconcile. It’s just who we are.”

“You have plenty in common, though.” The cat starts climbing down Lu Han’s back, and he doesn’t even bat an eye. “You’re doing acting, he’s doing directing. You’re both into that stuff. Bond or something.”

“I’m a _stage actor_ and he’s a _film director_ ,” says Baekhyun. “Those are completely—”

“He likes cooking, you like eating.”

“Most people—”

“You like hot guys, he’s a hot guy.”

Baekhyun has to laugh at that. “Why does everyone expect me to be attracted to him? Like, he’s okay, but he’s not really my type. He’s too…” Baekhyun searches for an inoffensive way to phrase it. “Small and geeky.” Well, good enough.

Lu Han turns to pick the cat back up. He sets it belly-up on his lap, and the cat just stares up at him with wide, slightly vacant eyes. “Yeah, I mean, kind of? But that’s surface-level Kyungsoo, man.” He scratches the cat’s belly. It bites at his fingers, like the asshole it is. Lu Han doesn’t seem to mind. “He’s actually pretty hot. Once you get past the shitty clothes and everything, I mean.”

Skeptical, Baekhyun says, “He’s… cute, but that’s it.”

Lu Han laughs. “Dude, no one who’s close to Kyungsoo calls him cute,” he says. “You’ll see what I mean. You just can’t let that first impression distract you from the truth. Plus, he’s like the nicest person I’ve ever met,” he adds.

Baekhyun has no idea why anyone would want him to have the hots for his tiny, dweeby roommate who’s almost definitely straight, but he doesn’t bother asking, since Lu Han is clearly just confused anyway. “Yeah, alright,” says Baekhyun. “So what was the favor you needed?”

 

—

 

An entire week passes before Baekhyun even notices something’s changed. Then, right as he’s grabbing a protein bar from a near-empty box in the kitchen one night, he pauses, wrapper crinkling in his hand, and turns to look at the digital clock on the counter. Dinner time. Or rather, the time food would normally be ready if Kyungsoo had cooked anything, which he hasn’t done in several days. Maybe he’s depressed or something, Baekhyun thinks. Maybe he just can’t bring himself to cook, even though he loves it. What a sad thought.

Baekhyun drops the snack back in the box and treks over to Kyungsoo’s room, where he stops at the just-barely-cracked-open door. He raps his knuckles on the doorframe. “Kyungsoo?”

“It’s open.”

He opens the door wider and peeks into the room.

Baekhyun’s hardly been in here since Kyungsoo moved in—hasn’t had much reason to, really. But it’s always startling how different it is from what he’d expected from a guy whose favorite item of clothing is ill-fitting khakis. It’s not blank and minimalist and boring; there are movie posters covering the walls, a wild array of them from _Delicatessen_ and _Oldboy_ to _The Empire Strikes Back_. Most of them are too sized-down and weirdly pristine to be original prints, but the colorful and conspicuously large _Interstellar_ poster over Kyungsoo’s bed looks very much like it’s been snatched from a display in a theater. The only piece of wall space that doesn’t have a poster is a section above his desk where some rough storyboards have been taped up. Then there’s a whole bookcase that’s filled with DVDs and manhwa and books on things like the history of film, or tips on screenwriting, or how to use Final Cut Pro. Baekhyun hasn’t bothered checking, but he suspects everything is alphabetized.

Kyungsoo, hunched over in front of his laptop and facing away from Baekhyun, doesn’t even look up as he says, “Did you need something?” He sounds distracted. Probably working on an assignment. He’s typing away rapidly on his keyboard, almost without pause.

“I’m just—checking in, I guess,” says Baekhyun. He spots something moving on the bed, looks and sees Baechu grooming herself. Her fur almost blends in with the dark grey sheets. “You haven’t, um, been using the kitchen lately, so I wanted to make sure you weren’t… dead. Or whatever.”

“Not dead,” says Kyungsoo. “Just busy.” Then he mutters something Baekhyun doesn’t quite catch.

“What?”

“I said if you want to eat,” says Kyungsoo, pausing briefly in his typing, “you’re free to cook something yourself for once.”

Taken aback, Baekhyun just gapes for a second. “If I want to—? No, no, I’m not saying you have—”

“I really don’t have the time or energy to waste on making food for someone who doesn’t appreciate it.” Kyungsoo’s saying all of this surprisingly calmly, not an ounce of venom in his voice. “So if you expected me to keep slaving away in the kitchen every day without any help or even a thank you, you’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.”

Shit. It’s true that Baekhyun has never offered to help with dinner, but that’s only because he’s not particularly useful in the kitchen and figured Kyungsoo would be better off without him getting in the way. That’s not the part he’s worried about right now, though. “I’ve thanked you!” A beat. “I think.”

Kyungsoo sighs. “No, you haven’t. You’ve said the food’s good, but that’s it.” He stops typing and stretches his arms. “I’m not your mom, Baekhyun. I don’t exist to feed you and clean up your messes.”

“I’ve never asked you to do either of those things,” Baekhyun argues.

“No,” says Kyungsoo. “But you obviously haven’t had a problem with letting me do it, either.”

Baekhyun doesn’t know what to say. When Kyungsoo asks him to leave so he can work on his assignment, Baekhyun does so without a word of complaint. Then, for a moment, he just stares at the closed door uncertainly.

It’s in that moment that Baekhyun realizes he doesn’t, for once, have a shitty roommate.

He _is_ the shitty roommate.

Baekhyun is so used to only looking out for himself and his own interests that he’s been framing everything as something Kyungsoo’s done wrong. Like Kyungsoo’s purposely being difficult and going out of his way to inconvenience him. For weeks, Kyungsoo was in their kitchen making dinner without even being asked, and all he wanted in return was some show of gratitude and a relatively clean apartment. Meanwhile, Baekhyun’s just been bitching about the guy’s perfectly nice cat wanting to sleep in his bed, because he’s a complete monster.

He fetches his phone from his room and calls the noodle place. He isn’t completely sure what Kyungsoo got last time, so he orders five different things and hopes at least one of them is something he might potentially want. Worst case scenario is that Baekhyun has to eat all of them himself and Kyungsoo will just vaguely dislike him forever, which would really suck, honestly.

After the food arrives, Baekhyun knocks lightly on Kyungsoo’s door again. “Hey, um, I ordered food,” he says.

No answer.

“Um. I probably should’ve asked if you even wanted anything first?” Baekhyun shifts his weight between his feet awkwardly. “But it’s… there if you want it. So.” He pauses, then knocks again. “Kyungsoo?”

He hears a faint shuffling on the other side of the door before it opens to reveal Kyungsoo, wearing an expression that is, at best, tired and politely confused.

“Were you trying to say something? I had my headphones on,” says Kyungsoo.

There’s a solid three seconds where Baekhyun’s mind goes completely blank, because the sight of Kyungsoo in a T-shirt, with no glasses and his hair pushed back messily, is so unexpected and overwhelming that Baekhyun’s brain short circuits. Kyungsoo’s eyes are prettier than he realized, and the shape of his face is—and his arms—and—

“Food,” Baekhyun manages to say, somehow. “I mean I—I ordered food. For you.”

Kyungsoo stares at him. Baekhyun stares back, flustered by how obscenely fucking beautiful Kyungsoo’s eyes are.

“Why?” Kyungsoo asks slowly, an understandable hint of suspicion in his voice.

“I wanted to make up for being a dick. You’re right, I have kinda been taking advantage of you and just… letting you do things for me. So I’m trying to extend a peace offering, I guess.”

More staring. It’s starting to get a little uncomfortable, but only because Baekhyun is suddenly all too aware of how nice Kyungsoo’s face is. He can’t believe he’s literally never seen Kyungsoo without glasses before. Or, for that matter, caught even a glimpse of Kyungsoo’s forehead.

“Oh.” Kyungsoo blinks. “Okay. Thanks, then. What’d you get?”

Baekhyun doesn’t remember. He can barely even remember his own name. “Uh… here, come on, I’ll show you.”

Baekhyun leads him to their small dining area, where all the containers are spread out on the table. Kyungsoo just stares some more.

“All of this?” he says.

“Yeah. I wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I just… got… a lot of stuff, I guess.” Baekhyun coughs into his fist. “Hopefully there’s something you like. And… if there’s not, sorry, I can get you something else. They’re still open for like an hour.”

Kyungsoo glances Baekhyun, then at the containers of food, then back at Baekhyun again. “Which one do you like?” he asks.

“What?”

“I’m not picky,” says Kyungsoo, “so you should take whichever one you like best and I’ll choose from the ones that are left after that.”

“But they’re all for you,” says Baekhyun, nonplussed.

“So I can do whatever I want with them, right?”

Baekhyun nods.

“Then I’m giving one to you,” Kyungsoo says with a smile. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Dinner that night consists mostly of Baekhyun trying not to stare too blatantly at Kyungsoo, who keeps pushing his hair away every time it falls back in his face. He keeps noticing weird things, like the fullness of Kyungsoo’s lips, how his low, smooth voice sounds even nicer when he smiles, how the features that Baekhyun previously took for granted are all actually really strong and lovely and… not cute at all, really. No wonder the other people in his life don’t call him that. God. _Fuck_.

Baekhyun reminds himself, repeatedly, that Kyungsoo is probably definitely straight, from the way he reacted to Baekhyun coming out to him, and Baekhyun really doesn’t want a repeat of what happened with Yixing. He’s better off pretending tonight never happened and just going back to thinking of Kyungsoo as a tiny and unspectacular little owl boy. He’ll forget all about his lingering thoughts on Kyungsoo’s mouth. Maybe. He hopes.

God, it really would’ve been better if Kyungsoo had been a murderer.

 

—

 

Baekhyun’s plan for being less terrible to live with consists of two primary goals: 1) Stop doing things that make Kyungsoo’s life difficult, and 2) do more things to help Kyungsoo out. The second one seems fairly easy to figure out, since Kyungsoo has made it perfectly clear that he’s tired of doing all the cooking and cleaning.

The first one, though, is made more complicated by the fact that Baekhyun is just a deeply flawed person. He can’t fix his personality and ingrained habits overnight. But he _can_ try to clean up a little around the apartment while Kyungsoo’s gone, so that’s what he’s going to do. He’ll be a good, responsible roommate, and Kyungsoo will be endlessly impressed with the new and improved Baekhyun and fall in love with—

“Don’t be stupid,” he mutters to himself.

He decides to start with the bathroom to get it over with. He looks up some tips online, then calls his mom for advice (“Are you feeling okay? You never do any serious cleaning,” she says), then consults the internet again. Once he feels sufficiently prepared, he puts on music, pulls his gloves and mask on, and gets to work.

It’s less traumatic than he expected—no terrifying mold anywhere, no spider webs in the corners. It was probably worse before Kyungsoo moved in, he thinks. He scrubs down the bathtub with diluted bleach, dancing and humming to his SNSD playlist, then rinses it out and moves on to the tiled floor. It’s giving his arms and shoulders a workout, at least, but his knees definitely won’t thank him for this.

After that, he tackles the sink, the counter, the medicine cabinet. He’s moving his hips to “Run Devil Run” and moving toiletries around to wipe under them when he feels his elbow hit something. There’s a clattering sound, followed by a splash. He turns slowly to look down at the still-dirty toilet in horror.

Kyungsoo’s toothbrush.

Floating in the toilet bowl.

All Baekhyun can do is gape, frozen in place and shocked into silence. This, he thinks, is the worst thing that could possibly have happened. He knocked Kyungsoo’s fucking toothbrush into the fucking toilet. He’s the clumsiest person on the planet, and he’s going to burn in hell for his crimes.

He tries to shake it off. “I’ll buy him a new one,” he says. “It’s fine. It’s all okay.”

Feeling disheartened, he cleans the rest of the bathroom gloomily. By the time he finishes he has a little over an hour until Kyungsoo’s supposed to get home. He considers just stopping there and admitting defeat. But no—he can’t give up now, after one minor (terrible, catastrophic) accident. If anything, he should try even harder to make up for what he did.

Which is how he ends up dropping a glass on the kitchen floor and watching it shatter into a million tiny, dangerous fragments.

He’s so distressed at this point and so wholly annoyed with himself and with gravity that his hands shake as he tries to pick up the pieces of glass to throw them away. He needs to grab a broom, he thinks, or a brush of some kind or—something. He doesn’t entirely know what to do now. He’s failed at pretty much everything at this point.

When Kyungsoo gets home, Baekhyun is still sitting on the kitchen floor, hugging his legs to his chest, chin resting on his knees as he stares dully at the disaster zone.

“Baekhyun?” says Kyungsoo. “Are you okay?”

“I tried to wash the dishes and fucked up ‘cause I dropped your toothbrush in the toilet,” Baekhyun says hollowly.

A beat of silence. Then Kyungsoo says, “How are those things connected?”

“Domino effect of failures,” says Baekhyun.

“I don’t—here.” Kyungsoo walks over and holds out a hand. “Come on, get off the floor.”

Baekhyun looks up at Kyungsoo, who, unfortunately, has not stopped being handsome with his glasses back in place and hair hanging over his forehead and clothes back to being stupid and terrible. If anything, he looks better than ever—not because anything’s changed, but because it _hasn’t_. He’s always looked this infuriatingly good. Baekhyun reaches out and lets Kyungsoo pull him to his feet, hating his life all the while.

“You didn’t try picking up the broken glass, did you?”

Baekhyun frowns. “Of course I did. What was I gonna do? Leave it there?”

“With your bare hands?” Kyungsoo sighs. “Let me see them.”

Huffing, Baekhyun holds his hands out, his pulse picking up a little when Kyungsoo touches them. Then a mild sting makes him wince.

“You sliced your finger,” says Kyungsoo. “It doesn’t look too bad, but you should still get it patched up.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

He heads to the bathroom, not realizing Kyungsoo’s following him until there’s a hand on his shoulder holding him back a little. He pauses mid-step, and Kyungsoo walks past him to open the cupboard and take out the small first aid kit.

“I can take care of it myself,” says Baekhyun. The bathroom smells strongly of cleaning products. It makes him cringe a little. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, but it’s your right hand. Doing it yourself would be awkward. Just let me help.”

He does. While Kyungsoo cleans and bandages the tiny cut for him, Baekhyun’s eyes trace over the frames of Kyungsoo’s glasses, then down his arms to his deftly-moving hands. For maybe the first time, Baekhyun notices Kyungsoo’s short, bitten-down nails and the rounded tips of his fingers, and it’s not something he ever _wanted_ to notice, really, because every detail about Kyungsoo is too much to deal with, but. There it is. Bitten nails and smallish but wide hands. Hands that he’s suddenly thinking about holding. The thought makes his heart race, because he’s an idiot with no control over his life anymore.

After what feels like a million years, Kyungsoo releases Baekhyun’s hand. He gives Baekhyun no time to so much as thank him before asking, “What did you say about my toothbrush?”

Baekhyun feels his cheeks burning. “It… fell in the toilet while I was cleaning,” he says. “I’m really sorry, I can buy you a—”

“You cleaned?” Kyungsoo peers around the bathroom, eyebrows raised. “Oh. It does look shinier in here.” No mention of the horrifically sterile smell of chemicals, thank _fuck_. He looks back to Baekhyun. “What was the occasion?”

“Nothing. I just—” It occurs to Baekhyun that _I just thought you’d like to get home to a clean apartment_ sounds like something a homemaker would say to their spouse, which is slightly horrifying. “I decided, um, to start pulling my weight with the chores and stuff.”

One corner of Kyungsoo’s mouth lifts into a small smile. “You don’t have to deep clean the bathroom for that, you know.”

“I know, but—anyway, it doesn’t matter.” Baekhyun drums his fingers against the sink. “I fucked up trying to do this, then I fucked up washing the dishes.” He huffs out a laugh. “You know, this was supposed to help you out a little, not—not give you more shit to do to clean up my messes. Sorry.”

The smile is a little fuller now, Kyungsoo’s eyes crinkling slightly. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nice that you tried. I appreciate it.” Then comes the single worst sentence Baekhyun has ever heard: “But since we’re talking about chores, did you remember to feed Baechu like I asked?”

Baekhyun gives up and acquaints himself once again with the floor.

 

—

 

“Maybe you don’t need to help in the kitchen,” Kyungsoo says gently after the third time Baekhyun manages to set something on fire. “You could just… order food sometimes. You’re good at that.”

“No, no, listen,” says Baekhyun. “I can cook things without fucking up. I promise. I’ve done it before, just—” He frowns at the blackened mess in the wok. “I’m having a bad week. Month. Life, maybe.”

Privately, Baekhyun thinks it might just be that Kyungsoo makes him feel bizarrely flustered now, and it’s difficult to do anything competently around him. Whenever Kyungsoo so much as looks at him, Baekhyun becomes a confused, stuttering mess and forgets how his limbs are even supposed to work, loses his entire capacity for eloquent speech, no longer understands basic words or ideas.

The worst of it happens when Kyungsoo smiles at him. His grin almost forms a sort of cartoonish heart shape, and the sound of his laugh gives Baekhyun all kinds of odd, fuzzy feelings, like he’s suddenly full of cotton candy and helium gas and… molten lava, probably. And it’s impossible for him not to smile back at Kyungsoo, even if it’s just in a nervous, borderline hysterical way. It’s painful and embarrassing, and he just wishes more than anything that he could go back to dismissing Kyungsoo as a tiny, adorable nerd. (Even though he thinks he might’ve been attracted to him right from the beginning, but not this much, and not on a physical level. It was easier to just be a little infatuated with how precious and lovely he was.)

Kyungsoo pats him on the shoulder, and Baekhyun has to revise his previous thought: The absolute worst is when Kyungsoo touches him.

“You really don’t have to try so hard, Baekhyun,” says Kyungsoo. “I was tired and under a lot of stress when I said all of that. Just doing a little bit here and there’s fine.”

“But that’s not fair to you,” says Baekhyun. He kind of wishes Kyungsoo would move his hand, but he also hopes equally as much that he doesn’t. “You shouldn’t have to do almost everything around here just ‘cause I’m an incompetent piece of shit.”

Kyungsoo shrugs and lets his hand fall. It’s both a disappointment and a relief. “We’ll figure something out,” he says. “Something that doesn’t involve you burning or breaking anything.” He picks up the wok and looks at the burnt meat with a slight grimace.

“Hey, speaking of figuring things out,” Baekhyun says, then hesitates, not sure if it’s worth bringing up the subject of Baechu’s obsession with Baekhyun’s closed door. They haven’t talked about it recently, but the scratching and whining has yet to stop; all that’s changed is that she does it every two or three nights rather than constantly.

Kyungsoo dumps the ruined food into the trash. Some bits remain stuck to the bottom, and he sighs at the mess before turning to Baekhyun. “Yeah?”

“I was wondering,” Baekhyun starts to say, but at the curious and patient and distinctly non-angry look on Kyungsoo’s face, he decides against mentioning Baechu. Better not to run the risk of messing everything up. “Uh—I mean—actually, never mind.”

Kyungsoo eyes him for a moment, then looks away. He opens a drawer and pulls out a spatula. “You _can_ talk to me about things, you know,” he says, scraping the pan with the spatula. “I mean, you know I don’t hate you or anything, right?”

“I didn’t think you did,” says Baekhyun. “But I know I’m not a great roommate.”

Letting out a quiet laugh, Kyungsoo says, “You’re not, but you’re not a terrible one, either.”

Well, that’s something, Baekhyun supposes. At least he’s not the worst ever. Still, the acknowledgment that he isn’t the easiest person to live with stings a little, even though he knows it’s completely fair and true. He wishes that his presence in Kyungsoo’s life were less of a burden, that the two of them could be friends instead of people who just tolerate living together.

“Tell him you wanna bone him,” Jongdae says after Baekhyun finishes voicing these complaints. They’re in the library again, which is the only thing preventing Baekhyun from wailing miserably. Instead, he’s been scribbling in his notebook, marking it up until the ink from his pen tears the paper and bleeds onto the next page. “Also, I fucking _knew_ you thought he was cute, you lying shit.”

“I didn’t, though!” Baekhyun says defensively, then groans. “Or maybe I did. I dunno. I hate this.”

“Okay, but seriously, you could just tell him you’re stupid and your brain doesn’t work around guys you think are pretty.” Jongdae shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

“I told you, though, I’m done with straight guys.” Baekhyun glances down at the current page and realizes he’s been doodling hearts all over it. He flushes and rips the page out quickly, crinkles it into a ball. He picks the pen back up and starts scribbling a bunch of angry lines instead. Much better.

Jongdae clears his throat quietly, lowers his voice. “Baekhyun, do you… really not know Kyungsoo’s gay?”

Baekhyun accidentally stabs his pen sharply into the notebook, puncturing layers of pages. He jerks his head up and gapes at Jongdae. “He—what? How? When?”

“He and Lu Han-hyung dated,” says Jongdae. “Why did you think they adopted cats together?”

“What.” Then, “Lu Han’s gay? Am I the only one who didn’t know?”

“Probably.”

Gaping in abject betrayal, Baekhyun says, “Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t I say a million times that I was in love with his thighs? What the fuck, Jongdae.”

“Actually, you said you wanted him to crush your head between them,” says Jongdae. “And I maintain that that’s super fucking weird. But either way, now you know.”

Baekhyun is only half-listening at this point, now that his brain has completely broken. But something clicks in his head as he remembers a suggestive string of emojis. He pulls out his phone to text Lu Han.

_Were you trying to set me and Kyungsoo up_

The reply moments later: _Yep ^^_

He texts back with, _Why do you want me to fuck your ex-boyfriend????_

Lu Han just says, _I told you, you guys have a lot in common hahaha_

Baekhyun doesn’t know what that means in this context. He shows it to Jongdae, who doesn’t seem to know what to make of it any better than Baekhyun does.

“Maybe you share a weird kink or something,” says Jongdae. “Who knows?”

That wasn’t a possibility Baekhyun ever wanted to consider, because it makes his life ten times more difficult and he feels like he does nothing but suffer these days already. He doesn’t even want to think about Kyungsoo having kinks. He doesn’t want to think about Kyungsoo at all.

“This is your fault,” says Baekhyun. “You jinxed it.”

Jongdae hums. “Sure, it’s my fault you fall in love with everyone all the time.”

Baekhyun doesn’t respond, just sulks.

 

—

 

There’s a series of events leading to up Kyungsoo walking in on Baekhyun masturbating.

First, Kyungsoo has a date, which means he wears nicer clothes than usual (apparently he _does_ know how to dress himself, but just chooses to be bad at it most of the time, for some unfathomable reason), pushes his hair back, and puts on a really nice but subtle perfume that makes Baekhyun’s heart flutter a little. He looks and smells and sounds like such a… boyfriend. Rolled-up sleeves. Woodsy scent. Cute smile. Jeans that do great things to his butt. Hm.

Kyungsoo having a date means that Baekhyun has to fend for himself for dinner, which is fine. He can actually make basic meals when Kyungsoo isn’t around to intimidate the hell out of him. It also means he has to feed Baechu, which is also fine. The two of them hang out together on the couch most of the time Kyungsoo’s gone—him watching dramas and pouting, her lying on his abdomen and purring while he scratches her ears. He whines a little about how her owner is ruining his life, and she just blinks at him, yawns, does nothing. So callous.

When Kyungsoo gets home (late— _really_ late, in fact, so much so that Baekhyun was starting to get anxious), he’s a little clumsy, stumbling when he takes off his shoes and swaying slightly when he shuffles into the living room. Drunk, Baekhyun realizes. He’s never seen Kyungsoo have more than the occasional beer with dinner, and it never seems to affect him. Drunk Kyungsoo is an entirely new phenomenon.

“How’d it go?” Baekhyun asks, sitting up so that a confused Baechu slides off his belly and into his lap.

“Dating,” Kyungsoo says as he walks to the couch, “is stressful.”

Baekhyun barely has time to move his legs before Kyungsoo flops onto one of the cushions with a sigh. Baechu vacates Baekhyun’s lap at once and moves to Kyungsoo’s.

“So not great, huh?” says Baekhyun, trying to ignore the relief washing over him. “That’s rough.”

“I only went on this one because of Jongin.” Kyungsoo doesn’t even pet Baechu, just rests a hand on her while she gazes up at him adoringly. “He thinks I’m lonely. Do I seem lonely?”

He’s looking at Baechu, so Baekhyun can’t entirely tell if he’s asking him or the cat. “I thought you were too busy to be lonely,” says Baekhyun. “With classes and your internship and stuff. I dunno.”

Kyungsoo nods as if to agree. There’s a pause, then he looks up at the TV and says, “What’re you watching?”

“No clue. Some period drama.”

“Oh. Cool. Mind if I join you?” he asks, even though he’s already sitting there on the couch with Baekhyun and Baechu and doesn’t look like he plans on moving.

Baekhyun laughs. “Go ahead.”

He wouldn’t have agreed to it if he’d known it would result in a drunk and cuddly Kyungsoo leaning against him, head on Baekhyun’s shoulder and everything. He’s soft and smells like a mixture of that perfume and hard liquor. Baekhyun wants to kiss him—won’t, because Kyungsoo’s drunk, but very much wishes he could.

Then, out of nowhere, Kyungsoo grabs Baekhyun’s wrist, touches fingers lightly to his palm, mumbles, “You have pretty hands.”

Baekhyun, wishing he could just be hit by a truck and put out of his misery, says, “Thanks, I mean, they’re okay. Good at… doing hand things. Like, uh… piano?”

“Oh.” Kyungsoo’s lightly stroking Baekhyun’s wrist and the heel of his palm in a maddening way. His hand creeps up a little further and he brushes against Baekhyun’s fingers. “Should play for me sometime. I wanna see. I mean. Hear.”

“O…kay,” Baekhyun says slowly. “I don’t—I’d have to get a keyboard from somewhere.”

“Okay.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t really say anything after that. He just keeps playing with Baekhyun’s fingers and stroking his hand and making his heart pound. It only stops when Kyungsoo falls asleep, still leaning on Baekhyun’s shoulder and smelling all warm and masculine and sharp.

It takes a while for Baekhyun to slowly extricate himself, gently pushing Kyungsoo toward the arm of the couch so he doesn’t fall over. He finally gets up and turns off the TV before just hovering uncertainly, not sure if he should wake Kyungsoo up or bring him a blanket or just… leave him. Ultimately he goes with the last option; the position Kyungsoo’s in probably isn’t comfortable enough for him to stay there for long, and Baekhyun isn’t strong enough to deal with him right now anyway.

He retreats to his room, hoping to fall asleep as soon as possible and put all of this behind him. All he does for a while, though, is lie there staring at the ceiling, too worked up to even understand what the concept of sleep is. He lets out a huff of frustration.

“Fuck it,” he mutters before pushing his boxers down his thighs.

It’s supposed to be quick and simple, nothing fancy; just him jerking off to relieve stress and calm his frazzled nerves. But once he gets sufficiently into it, he finds himself stripping all the way down and then rummaging around in the drawer of his bedside table for lube.

There’s a telltale scratch at the door when he’s right in the middle of it. He grits his teeth. He’ll just ignore it, he decides. She’ll give up eventually anyway, and in his current state he profoundly does not want to deal with his roommate’s cat. So despite the scratching and meowing, Baekhyun keeps going, jacking off more defiantly than he ever has in his life.

He pauses, though, when he hears a distinct, “Come on, over here.” The scratching stops. He holds his breath. Then there’s a slightly softer, “Yeah, I’ve got you. Good girl.”

Baekhyun lets out a quiet sigh. Kyungsoo must’ve picked her up to carry her somewhere else, thank fuck.

Then the door opens.

There’s a brief second where Kyungsoo, because of the dim lighting in the room and the fact that he’s still drunk and not wearing his glasses, doesn’t seem to realize he’s walked in on Baekhyun fingering himself. But it’s obvious when he _does_ become aware of it, because he freezes in place, drops Baechu on the floor and stares at Baekhyun with comically wide eyes. The cat darts out of the room, leaving the two of them alone with their awkwardness.

For a moment that’s probably just a couple of seconds long but seems to last for twenty years, they both gape at each other in mortification. Baekhyun still has two fingers in his ass and a hand on his dick. Nothing about this situation is even remotely okay.

“I thought you were asleep,” Kyungsoo says, breaking the silence.

“I’m not,” Baekhyun says weakly.

“Yeah,” says Kyungsoo. “Yeah, I… see that.”

Silence again.

“I’m gonna go,” says Kyungsoo. “Um. Sorry.”

He disappears quickly, shutting the door behind him. Baekhyun doesn’t quite know what to do for a minute. And to make matters worse, he’s still almost painfully hard.

He hates his life so much.

 

—

 

For the next several days, the two of them barely talk, hardly even see each other at all. Kyungsoo mostly stays in his room. Baekhyun tries to spend as much time out of the apartment as possible, going so far as to actually study in the library, like a student who cares about his grades or something. It’s all an awkward mess, even though it probably shouldn’t be. There’s nothing inherently weird about one roommate seeing the other naked and masturbating, is there? They should be able to laugh it off and pretend it didn’t happen, right?

Maybe this isn’t going to work. Maybe they just shouldn’t live together, because everything Baekhyun does ruins Kyungsoo’s life a little more, and everything Kyungsoo does makes Baekhyun fall embarrassingly head-over-fucking-heels in love with him, for some ungodly reason.

On the sixth day, Baekhyun gets a text from Lu Han that reads, _Soo told me what happened_.

Baekhyun thumps his forehead against the wooden table repeatedly. _Hilarious isn’t it,_ he texts back.

 _Yeah especially the part where he can’t stop talking about ur dick lmao_.

The loud “ _WHAT_ ” that Baekhyun lets out results in him being kicked out of the library. He stands outside the building with his backpack hanging from one shoulder, halfway unzipped and books threatening to fall out. It’s starting to rain. He barely notices as he texts back as quickly as possible.

_Why is he talking about my dick what’s he saying what’s going on_

_He’s having a crisis over how pretty it is and how he keeps thinking about it and he can’t look you in the eye now because all he can think about is you jerkin it apparently_

“Fuck.” Baekhyun drops his phone and scrambles to pick it up from the damp ground. “ _Fuck_.”

 _If this is a joke it’s not funny_ , he replies.

Then, from Lu Han:

_I wouldn’t joke about this dude_

_It’s been like half an hour and he’s still talking about it_

_‘He can’t even make rice I shouldn’t want to fuck him’ – actual quote_

_Also who tf can’t make rice lol get your shit together_

Baekhyun is about to reply defensively, despite how overwhelmed he is by all this information, but then Lu Han follows up with, _Anyway I just told him you were complaining about liking him too._

Baekhyun really, really hates Lu Han. _What did he say_ , he asks.

_Nothing, he just got down on the floor and he looks dead_

_Wait he just said sth_

_‘I don’t like him I just wanna touch his dick and hold his hand and feed him dinner it’s not the same’_

_You should probably get home and talk to him_

At a brisk jog, it takes seven minutes for Baekhyun to get from the campus library to his front door. When he walks in, panting, all he sees at first is Lu Han lounging on the couch. Then, after getting a little closer, he spots Kyungsoo, who is indeed lying facedown on the living room floor, head pillowed on his arms.

“Um,” says Baekhyun. He drops his backpack on the floor and stands awkwardly.

“I’m gonna go,” says Lu Han, getting to his feet. “Have fun, and remember to thank me in your wedding vows.” He steps over Kyungsoo, then claps Baekhyun on the shoulder on his way out. Stupid Lu Han and his stupid big mouth and stupid nice thighs, Baekhyun thinks.

He takes a couple more hesitant steps to close the distance, then asks, “Need a hand?”

Kyungsoo lifts his head and gives Baekhyun a miserable look that’s unintentionally really endearing.

“This is awkward,” says Kyungsoo.

“Yep.”

“I hate Lu Han.”

“Me too.”

Kyungsoo climbs to his feet on his own, and they both stand there in silence, adamantly refusing to look at each other for a short while. Baekhyun can’t remember the last time he felt this nervous or confused about anything. He risks a glance at Kyungsoo, who’s fidgeting and biting his lip and looking somewhere off to the side, away from Baekhyun. He’s wearing his stupid adorable khakis today.

“So.” Baekhyun rocks on his heels. “Liked what you saw, huh?” He laughs. “Wow, uh. Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Kyungsoo smiles and shakes his head. That’s something, at least.

“Listen,” says Baekhyun, “I know I’m weird and kind of annoying and bad at… a lot of things, and I’d probably be embarrassed if I were attracted to me, too, so I’m—”

“The day I moved in, you looked really hot and you were nice to my cat and got me food from one of my favorite restaurants,” says Kyungsoo, quiet and sounding vaguely distraught. “I’ve liked you this whole time, Baekhyun. I was frustrated because I thought you didn’t care and only wanted me around for my cooking, and my contributions to the rent and all that. But then you started really trying—I mean, you failed at pretty much everything, but you still tried. For my sake.”

“I only seem like an idiot because you make me nervous and I’m afraid of fucking up around you,” Baekhyun blurts out. “Then that just makes me fuck up even more and I feel bad for making everything difficult for you. And I can cook rice, everyone knows how to make rice, I just. Can’t do it in front of really good-looking guys.”

Kyungsoo finally looks up. His face is slightly flushed and he’s wearing the sweetest smile. Baekhyun is possibly in love.

“You never told me you were gay, you know,” says Baekhyun. “I came out to you five seconds after we met. You should’ve said something.”

A shrug. “I didn’t really know how to say it without seeming like I was interested. Which I was,” he adds.

“Well.” Baekhyun doesn’t really know what to say to that. “Okay. That’s fair.”

“What would _you_ have said, if you were me?”

“I… don’t know,” Baekhyun admits. “Probably something like, ‘Oh, nice! Lemme know if you’re ever down to fuck, haha.’ And then you’d think I was a freak and decide we definitely couldn’t live together.”

Kyungsoo chuckles. “Yeah, probably.”

They lapse into silence again, now shy rather than awkward, both fighting back pleased smiles. Baekhyun feels ready to burst with joy, gleeful laughter bubbling up in him. He could kiss Kyungsoo now, he thinks, and it wouldn’t end in tragedy because Kyungsoo isn’t straight—Kyungsoo actually likes him and _wants_ him. What a strange thought.

“Sorry my dick made you have a crisis,” says Baekhyun. “But, well. In its defense, you’ve caused it a lot of problems, too.”

“You,” says Kyungsoo, “have a really off-putting way of flirting.”

Baekhyun grins. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

Then somehow it’s Kyungsoo kissing him, not the other way around. His lips feel exactly as good as they look. Or maybe better. And every part of him that Baekhyun touches is soft and nice, squeezable. He makes the most adorable noise when Baekhyun grabs his ass, making Baekhyun rethink the traitorous idea that Kyungsoo was too handsome to be cute.

Hands wander a little more. Baekhyun breaks away long enough to murmur, “Should probably slow down.” He kisses Kyungsoo again, because it’s wonderful and a little dizzying and has easily become his new favorite activity. He’ll never play video games again if he can just keep doing this.

This time it’s Kyungsoo who stops. “Do you want to?”

Baekhyun doesn’t have to think about it long before he says, “No, not really.”

“Good,” says Kyungsoo. “Neither do I.”

Kyungsoo’s room is closer, so they stumble toward it, laughing and kissing, Baekhyun walking backward and trusting Kyungsoo not to let him fall.

 

—

 

“Do you want breakfast?”

“Yes,” Baekhyun says immediately. When Kyungsoo starts to get up, he catches him around the waist and pulls him back down, saying, “Wait wait wait, no, don’t go.”

“I have to get up to make food,” says Kyungsoo, a trace of amusement in his voice. His morning voice is wonderful, Baekhyun thinks, all low and scratchy and—wow. Yeah. And his hair is all tousled from sleep and sex and Baekhyun wanting to run his fingers through it constantly. Baekhyun could get used to waking up beside Kyungsoo. Especially waking up beside him naked.

“Not yet. Stay in bed with me,” Baekhyun whines. He buries his face against Kyungsoo’s neck, pressing his lips to the skin. “I’m not even hungry. In fact, I never need to eat again, so we have no reason to leave this bed. We can just stay here and cuddle. Or not cuddle,” he adds. “Plenty of options. Half of them require being naked anyway.”

Kyungsoo hums. Baekhyun can feel the vibration against his mouth. Fingers skim lightly over Baekhyun’s arm. “We spent hours fucking last night, and you already wanna go again?” asks Kyungsoo, sounding only halfway exasperated.

“I’m insatiable,” says Baekhyun. “It’s a quality you’ll learn to love.”

“After breakfast, we can do whatever you want.” Baekhyun tightens his grip. Kyungsoo chuckles. “I really wish we could stay in bed, believe me. But I’m starving, and I also have a cat to feed.”

“Fine,” Baekhyun says with a huff, releasing Kyungsoo and rolling onto his back. “I see who your favorite really is.”

Kyungsoo kisses him on the cheek, then slides off the too-small-for-two-people mattress and walks to the dresser to grab clothes. Baekhyun sits up a little and takes the opportunity to shamelessly ogle his bare ass.

“Speaking of Baechu,” says Kyungsoo as he, disappointingly, pulls on a fresh pair of underwear, “did you sleep better without her yelling at you?”

Baekhyun snorts. “I would’ve slept like the dead even if she _had_ been making noise. But sure, the peace and quiet was nice, probably.”

Next comes a shirt. Baekhyun really hopes no more clothing follows after that. “I’m surprised you were okay with leaving the door open,” says Kyungsoo. “You kept saying for weeks that you couldn’t sleep like that.”

“I got tired of fighting a losing battle,” Baekhyun lies, knowing that the reason he was okay with it was because sleeping next to Kyungsoo made it impossible for him to be paranoid about getting murdered in his sleep.

Kyungsoo seems to accept that answer. He starts to walk off, then pauses in the doorway to ask, “Oh, did you want to eat at the table, or just have me bring it to you in here?”

“We haven’t even been dating for an entire day, and you’re already the best boyfriend I’ve ever had,” says Baekhyun. “Breakfast in bed. I’ll repay you in blowjobs.”

Kyungsoo grins and says, “Verbal contracts are binding,” then heads off to the kitchen.

Baekhyun flops back down on the mattress, grinning up at the ceiling stupidly. Getting a roommate is the best decision he’s ever made.


End file.
